Comic Review: Rick and Morty – The End #4

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Morty is forced to defend Rick in the trial of the century, with numerous faces from their past appearing to judge them (including the judge!). But like always, Rick has some back up plans up his sleeve.

OUR TAKE

The clock ticks down to the end of Rick and Morty…comics, or at least the ones specifically made by Oni Press. And even then not really because it looks like there’s still a couple spin-offs that will keep going at least a little while longer. In the meantime, this very specific story arc is what is actually getting close to the end. And keeping with a story claiming to be what a final Rick and Morty story would look like, we have another buttload of cameos, though they are also all from the first handful of seasons, almost as if the writers of this comic only really remember the early parts of the show. They all show up as the jury in Rick’s trial, and to be references to the episodes they appeared in, but the main purpose of this trial is for Rick to pull one over on everyone, including Morty, AGAIN, and use an obtuse VR method of viewing the evidence to somehow slip into the consciousness of one of the people in the courtroom, the identity of which will be revealed in the penultimate issue of the arc next month. And it is at this point that I really have to say that I am quite underwhelmed by what we’ve gotten from both this and the Vs The Universe thus far.

Like yeah, the antagonist is technically a universe, you can’t get much bigger than that, but it’s also all contained within a single person sized entity, whose abilities are really only different in Rick’s knack for warping reality or overcoming challenges in aesthetics. Not to mention she’s just not an interesting character in terms of personality or design, and it feels like a bit of a waste considering she is meant to be representative of where the show currently takes place, while the dead and/or reincarnated universe is meant to be where it started. You would think that would open up possibilities to reflect on the earlier stages of the show and what changed and grew over time, instead of just rolling out a bunch of mostly meaningless cameos. At least putting some of these into a new Vindicators team made them feel active and like they had lives outside of what was happening here, but then Parmesean just kills them all in this issue, so that’s that for them I guess. Ah well, two more issues of this, and then the final Forever issue, and then…who knows, but I probably won’t be covering it.